Social Media and Postmodern Poetics

Social Media and Postmodern Poetics

Widely used social media terms such as remixing and remixability are just well coined “tags” for the phenomenon established a long ago in the postmodern poetics. However we name them, there are certain distinctive features embodied in all artistic creations developed within the postmodern frame. The same applies to the postmodern communication theory:

"Working through such modes as appropriation, synthesis, recombination, mutation and generation, postmodern poetics expresses a commitment to the dialogical, social world."
(Conte, Joseph M. Unending Design: the Form of Postmodern Poetry)

In the postmodern poetics, as well as in our social media world, the phenomenon of the author and the institution of authorship have been deconstructed.

Similarly, in the Web-based communications, everyone is a potential author, contributor, and message creator . The concept of a traditional author (or a message creator) is deconstructed and replaced by a collective authorship. The individual as well as an organization cedes control over the communicative process.

User-generated content has become a distinctive feature of new interactive media. As a consequence, the content is not only created by a “collective intelligence,” it is also formed through the network of other contents.

Every digital text refers to many other documents by using a number of links embedded in the text. This hypertextuality (or we can call it "remixability" if you want) results in a fragmented digital text whose meaning co-exists simultaneously within an interconnected system of other texts. The final product is like a palimpsest; it assimilates all other texts that refer to or from it, but still keeps their integrity alive.

Furthermore, message recipients are no longer passive consumers but active participants in content creation. As a consequence, the traditional concept of a reader has been deconstructed as well, since the recipient has become a producer and an active contributor in communication process.

Social media also signifies a transformation of the old two-way communication model and the creation of a new all-way dispersive communication model. This model has been also developed from the poetics of postmodernism. New communication practice incorporates an “all-together” mentality which is why social media means primarily the democratization of communication. Participation, sharing, collaboration, and interactivity are the crucial terms in explaining the nature of new media and its impact on communication.

This postmodern change has only culminated in our times because of the production of the new Web 2.0 tools and applications that have enabled practicing new modes of connections and communications. This is inherent in the two-way communication model and it was advocated long before social media, but social media has made it even more essential.

Politics 2.0

Digital Politics

A few days ago I was happy to chat with and interview Alan Rosenblatt. We talked about social media world and how the explosion of new media tools is shaping politics and 2008. presidential elections. Here is a short summary of Alan's career.
Alan Rosenblatt has a PhD in Political Science and he became a professor in Political Science in the early 1990s. At that time, his focus of interest shifted from the graduate school research on the use of television to influence public opinion into talking about the Internet politics.

"In 1993 I was shown Mosaic, the first Web browser and I had a strong feeling it's going to change the world of politics. And I focused my energy on it from there on."

At that point, Alan was a professor at George Mason University where he was teaching political science, persuasion and propaganda, research methods, and public opinion. As a result of his knowledge and passion he put together a course called Politics of Cyberspace, the first time in the world that anyone thought the course on the Internet Politics. After that, Allan started doing both consulting and teaching the Internet Politics. He is also an avid blogger at DrDigiPol.

Politics 2.0

If you liked this video, you can look for more inspiring thoughts on Digital Politics and Internet Advocacy on the Web-sites that Alan contributes to. He writes for TechPresident.com, a blog about the Web and the presidential elections, and occasionally for PoliticsOnline.com, Idealware.org, and the Institute for Politics Democracy & the Internet. He is also active at e-Democracy.org and contributes to many academic journals devoted to the intersection of politics, social science, and the internet.

What is Social Media?

"A powerful global

conversation has begun.
Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies."

(The Cluetrain Manifesto)

Social media is usually defined as online technologies and practices that people use to connect and share opinions, experiences, and knowledge with each other. The concept of social media typically involves the usage of tools and applications such as blogs, message boards, online social networks, podcasts, webcasts, Wikis, and live-stream microblogging tools to allow users to easily interact. A few prominent examples of popular social media applications today are Facebook and MySpace (social networking), YouTube (video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), Digg (news sharing), del.ici.ous (social bookmarking), Twitter (micro-blogging), Wikipedia (reference), and Flickr (photo sharing). Participation, sharing, collaboration, and interactivity are the crucial terms in explaining the nature of new media and its impact on communication.

Social media means primarily the democratization of communication. Everyone is a potential author, contributor, and message creator in Web-based communications. User-generated content is a distinctive feature of interactive media. The content is not only created by a “collective intelligence,” it is also formed through the network of other contents. Every digital text refers to many other documents by using a number of links embedded in the text. This hypertextuality results in a fragmented digital text whose meaning co-exists simultaneously within a system of other texts.

Social media also signifies a transformation of the old two-way communication model and the creation of a new all-way dispersive communication model. This model has been developed from the poetics of post-modernism. The concept of a traditional author (or a message creator) is deconstructed and replaced by a collective authorship. The individual cedes control over the communicative process and its final product. Message recipients are no longer passive consumers but active participants in the content creation.

The nature of new media is participatory. This is a radical decentralization and a shift of “power to the edges.” “The divide between the publishers and the public is collapsing. This turns mass media upside down. It creates media of the masses.” (Baker and Green, 2008). Consequently, some of the key words that define the nature of the new media are networking, syndication, collaboration, openness, real-time discussion, engagement, community building.